


Blame me

by Inkyfingerstoo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Drama, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Sadness, Season 3, kree stone, season 2 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3952330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkyfingerstoo/pseuds/Inkyfingerstoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's his fault. She's gone and it's his fault. And he just stares at that bloody alien stone for hours, days, weeks (every minute of every day)...willing her back, willing it to give her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame me

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expansion of my little tumblr post meta/sorta fic. It's sad and depressing soooo if you love angst you've come to the right place. From Fitz's POV so do keep in mind it's highly emotional and dramatic. Thank you for reading!

The room hums softly, that sort of background vibration that tells you electricity is running.

The steady drone is periodically interrupted by uneven staccato beeps from the multitude of electronics in the room, set-up on numerous cargo boxes and tables surrounding the object in the middle. The various beeps and clicks sounding like Morse code, except there's no message to decipher.

The only other sound comes from the alien stone in the center of the room, when it suddenly collapses into a liquid phase before reforming into a solid structure. It growls like an agitated bear, then sloshes around the bottom of the case as if it's thick wet mud caught in a violent storm before reforming into stone with a creaking and scratching like two cinder blocks rubbing against one another. There's no predicting it, no signal that it's about to happen. It just collapses, flowing against the glass sides, waves reaching up, seeming to feel around, looking for something to grasp, something to take...the way it took her.

After it was discovered that she had been....swallowed? Taken? Absorbed? (Not killed. Never killed). S.H.I.E.L.D. had insisted the stone's enclosure be reinforced, new seals, new locks. They hadn't even let him in the room until a whole week after; which had sent him into a tailspin of rage where he was restrained by four or five agents, and subsequently spent the night in the cell once occupied by Ward, Bakshi, even Skye's father, as if he was at the same level as them, the same class of psychotic scum. The agency insisted they had to secure the room, make it safe for entry. They sent in robotics, tested every inch of the floor and walls, before any agents could enter. First priority was to secure the stone to make safe everyone at the base.

(The living are the priority).

Callous words in a callous world.

(She's not dead!)

They sent in a Stark tech android to close and reseal the glass door, after discovering it was left open, after it took Jemma.

He can remember how he had held his breath, how his heart most definitely ceased beating as a drone swept the floor for human remains; some agent suggesting it as a possibility (you're wrong. you're wrong), referencing the human reaction to the crystal (they're from the same alien source after-all).

(ashes to ashes, dust to dust)

The drone had found nothing and he could breathe again, though it was difficult. He's not sure if his heart started up again though. He can't seem feel it beat lately.

The enclosure has been upgraded. Now there are codes and other mechanisms safely locking the stone in. Codes he does not have access to. No one says it, but he knows what they think. Knows how the advanced seals and locks are in direct correlation to what he did, what he caused. His mistake.

He just stares at it. Spends a lot of his time doing that.

The Kree stone in its supreme technologically advanced prison. Its fancy cage.

All it seems to do is stare back. Mocking him. Taunting him. Torturing him. The two strange square carvings near the top of the stone like black depth-less eyes, the line of carvings underneath them like a grim straight-lined mouth, refusing to open and give him the answers he so desperately needs. When the stone collapses and reforms the square placement moves. They have charts of each placement it's ever reformed into, attempted to map them, find a pattern. But it all appears random. Though it seems whenever Fitz is in the room, whenever he stands in front of it, staring it, it's always composed into that strange face-like formation.

If he's not staring at it then he's sitting at one of the various tables, either observing the useless scrolling data of bizarre energy signatures or replaying the security footage of Jemma being taken. Over and over again. Watching with paranoid concentration, partly looking for clues, mostly as punishment. Watches the stone burst out of the case, violently shoving Jemma to the cold concrete. Watches the shock and fear overwhelm her features. The way her body slams to the ground, pain and terror in her eyes as the liquid stone over-takes her; her mouth open in a scream before it's immediately muted when the alien material washes over her head like an ocean wave of black tar. Her right hand attempts to dig into the floor, find purchase in anything to pull away from the alien object crashing over her body but it's too late, it's already pulling her backwards and oily lines of desperation follow the path her fingers make (had her nails been longer they probably would have torn off, leaving a grotesque trail of blood for him to follow back to the stone standing still and quiet in its case once again).

He's traced the path her fingers took, scratching into concrete floor, squatted down, head hanging between his shoulders, the pads of his fingers running along the floor where hers had been.  He hears her scream in his sleep. It's only a brief half-second of sound before she's swallowed up. But it's enough. Enough to fill his nightmares. That's why he doesn't sleep much anymore. Hates it. Doesn't see the point of it really, he finds no respite from the guilt in his dreams.

But what he re-watches more than any other footage. More than him unlocking the case, more than the rock swallowing her up; he watches the five seconds of her after he had stuttered out an invitation to dinner. With him. Her and Him. Somewhere nice. After she had said "oh," wide-eyed but eager, her head bobbing in affirmation. He watches those five seconds after he had left the room, unblinking, heart swelling when a bashful smile grows on her lips, a smile of anticipation, a smile of hope, a smile of happiness. Those five seconds are precious to him and he finds immeasurable comfort in them but then if he forgets to stop the feed, or if he's feeling particularly masochistic he'll keep watching, watch as the stone swallows her up. 

It’s a form of torture, one he deserves. Because he opened the door. And the guilt eats him alive. He opened it, with all his mumbling and stumbling, he unlatched it. It’s his fault she’s gone.

And so he confines himself to the room. He's going to fix this. Even without her there, he will. There is no other option.

(I'm doing what we always do)

Although without her there. Without her steadfast calm, there are quite a few more 'incidents.'

It’s not surprising to walk into the room (or 'the event site' as S.H.I.E.L.D. coldly dubbed it) and find a table of tech upturned, the devices and monitors smashed and scattered on the floor, and then there he'll be, standing with his arms tightly crossed, fingers gripping his biceps so tightly that they’re bloodless, a foot from the glass containing the stone.

Maybe if he had gotten back to the room sooner? Instead of letting his insecurities run wild, thinking Jemma changed her mind, didn't want dinner; rejected him all over again. Maybe if he had come to check on her when she didn't come to him. Maybe.

(Maybe there is)

The overturned tables are only small incidents compared to what happened shortly after Jemma was taken. If his head was right he might have been embarrassed. As it is he can't bring himself to care.

It was one night. Or was it morning? Time is kind of irrelevant now, at least for him. There were no other agents in the room. There had been no breakthroughs, no new knowledge, no new leads, just continued crushing disappointment, and unwanted sympathetic looks. And he couldn't take it. He snapped.

And he screamed. He screamed and screamed her name. Like the day she fell from the bus, letting the wind gracefully pull her away and down to her death.

He screamed as he stood in front of that heartless rock, fists clenched and white knuckled, his saliva and hot breath fogged up the glass, some part of his mind had hoped his vocal chords would shred and blood would start spraying out to muss up the pristine enclosure. Amazingly the glass had begun to smudge with red, but not from a tear in his throat. He didn’t remember making the decision to start hitting the case but once he started punching, he couldn't seem to stop. He'd vaguely recognized the alarms sounding (one of the many new safety precautions) the moment he had touched the glass but he hadn't cared. He was still screaming her name and beating at the glass, but now with tears running down his face, highlighted by the strobe lights flashing from above. The sharp click of the door latch behind him followed by the efficient stomp of booted military personnel had made its way to his brain yet he hadn’t stopped.

_"Agent Fitz!"_

_That's got to be Coulson, might be Mack. Could be May for all he's aware._

_He's stopped screaming, just gasping sobs now. He takes little comfort in the fact that the alarm keeps the sounds hidden. What does he care. He doesn't. It doesn't matter._

_"Hey, beat it. I got this."_

_Mack then. That's good, he likes Mack. No bullshit._

_(He doesn't talk to you like the others)_

_Fitz falls to his knees as the alarm cuts out, one hand sliding down the glass, leaving a grotesque smear of blood in the shape of his palm and fingers. Yet the stone still does not react. Remains staring stoically back at him. It's the last sight he sees as the sedative Mack administers works its way through his system._

Mack has had to sedate him several times since then just to get him to sleep, to get him out of the room. The event site.

The room where Jemma Simmons was taken from him.

They were going to have dinner, a date, a dinner-date, he had asked and she had said, ‘oh,’ and smiled and nodded. "Maybe there is." But now there isn't. And it's his fault.

If he were inclined to look in a mirror he'd see the face of a haunted man looking back. Dark circles ringing his sunken eyes, a heavy stubble coating his cheeks. What does it matter? (It doesn't).

There are more important things than him.

They say time heals all wounds.

(You just need more time to heal)

Except it doesn't. Time has only festered the wound, until it's black and rotten with the smell of blame, guilt and failure.

He's aware of how the team looks at him. Aware of the pity, the sympathy, the stoicism, the determination, the fear, the wariness. All of it is useless.

(Because you think I'm useless?)

He's vaguely reminded of when Jemma was undercover at Hydra (though he hadn't known that at the time) and he was consumed with battling both loneliness and the brain damage, the misfiring circuits, the words getting mixed up or not there at all.

This is worse than that.

He was getting better. Could feel the difference. After the bitterness of Jemma's departure and subsequent return had faded and they began to rebuild, it was like the broken pieces of his brain were being rebuilt as well. But not anymore. Everything is frayed and split once again, although this time there's an edge of madness to it all, like he's sinking to the bottom of the sea, drowning, and won't find his way back up, won't get to the surface...Jemma's not here to pull him up this time. 

(One breath but there's two of us)

He continues to stare at the rock pitilessly.

Jemma had wanted to drop a drone into the box, her insatiable curiosity having done a pretty quick turnaround from her previous mentality regarding alien artifacts. Find it all, destroy it all. She had been right though, even in her emotional state, overwhelmed by anguish after Trip had died; they should have listened to her. Destroyed it the moment it was found. Why didn't they listen to her? He has no patience for Agent Weaver and Bobbi's excuses of "too many variables," "too risky to destroy it." Well they've all discovered the risk of keeping it. The life of Jemma Simmons.

(SHE'S NOT DEAD!)

He wants to scream at them and ask if it was worth it. Wants to scream and scream and never stop.

Now he's the one who wants to drop a drone into the box.

(What's in that box?)

No, not want. Need. He needs to get more information. It's been weeks and there's nothing. No signs, no clues, nothing. For all the science and technological advancements the world offers, it's all been made obsolete.

But he won't give up because that's not an option. She didn't with him. He thought she had, letting emotion and irrationality overwhelm the truth, which she tried to tell him.

(I did no such thing)

Why didn't he let her speak? Why wouldn't he just listen? They might have finally been able to talk about it at dinner but now...

Now it's just him and the stone. But Jemma is alive. He knows it. Can feel it. Because if she was dead, he would no doubt be too. Their lives are entwined, there's not one without the other. They're a team.

So there is no other option to Fitz. And he will find her.

(No energy in the universe is created and none is destroyed.)

 


End file.
